


What You Have Tamed

by Cerberusia



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-26 12:54:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22817119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerberusia/pseuds/Cerberusia
Summary: Dying would have been easier. Rey made him do it the hard way. After all, why break the habit of a lifetime?
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 4
Kudos: 31
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	What You Have Tamed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lucymonster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucymonster/gifts).

> This is a very late treat just squeaking in under the wire. But I wanted to give you something that would express a) my huge FEELINGS about this ship post-TROS, and b) my appreciation for all your lovely Reylo fic.

Dying would have been easier. Rey made him do it the hard way. After all, why break the habit of a lifetime?

"Kylo Ren is dead," she said, when they asked.

"Really?" Finn was still holding her arms in his warm hands. His face was very close to hers.

"Kylo Ren is dead," she repeated. To his credit, Finn understood.

"This is _such_ a bad a idea, Rey. When he declares himself Dark Emperor of the Galaxy again or whatever, I'm going to say I told you so. Assuming either of us are alive, because let's face it, he's gonna come straight for you." But he didn't tell anybody else. It warmed her inside that he trusted her judgement.

So Ben was out there, doing penance. When he'd taken the mask off for the first time, she'd been so surprised by his ungainly mole-spattered face, big nose and huge ears and great dark eyes like black holes. He hadn't looked like Kylo Ren at all. And now the denizens of various Outer Rim shipping routes got to see that face weekly - she might be envious, if she didn't see him in her dreams, waking and sleeping.

They slipped into each other's ambit so easily, like two notes in the same chord harmonising. He always looked so pleased to see her, there in his berth on his one-man cargo ship. His fellow spacers were droids: one pilot and a loader-maintenance unit. DF-1500 and X325-PD, or Daf and Peedee. They were capable, but were also wiped clean after every job they did, which didn't make them great conversationalists.

They usually met at night, when they were less likely to be disturbed; but their day-night cycles didn't quite synchronise across different star systems, and sometimes she just reached out during meditation, as easily as reaching out a hand, just to feel him there in the Force. She would catch a glimpse of him at the controls or planetside, dressed in the battered olive drab she'd seen on so many anonymous spacers. It made him look more like his father. And he, lightyears away, would take her hand.

It was easier if they didn't talk: it meant they couldn't argue. Their bodies knew exactly what to say. Both of them had kept to themselves for so long, Ben out of shyness and Rey from necessity, and the sheer animal pleasure of kissing took them both by surprise. She could put her hand on his broad back, slip her fingers under his rough shirt to feel the smooth pale skin interrupted by moles, and his ribcage expanding and contracting with his breaths. How strange, how wonderful to touch another person like this. How marvellous to learn his body by touch, because it belonged to her now too.

That's why you can't just go off and get yourself killed, she'd told him. Your life is mine now. You're not allowed to throw it away.

He'd said he'd do whatever she told him, anything, anything at all.

So live. Work to bring the Force back into balance. Do penance. We need to finish rooting out the First Order. You're going to help.

And that was exactly what he was doing. Low-level subsistence spacer work, like so many beings across the galaxy who had a ship and not much else. But Ben had a bigger plan. More specifically, Rey had a bigger plan, and he was part of it. They needed supplies and information, and spacerats like Ben's new alias could pick up both with a little direction. And they didn't need to find a secure channel for him to relay them.

He had a particular knack for catching her undressed.

They were planetside, on one of the Core worlds Rey had never really thought she might visit. Coruscant. The people here were rich. The whole planet was covered with a city of glittering towers where money reigned supreme. Rey had read about it, but had subconsciously labelled it as something akin to a fairytale, and she spent the first few days being shocked anew that it really existed and that people really lived like this.

"Did you grow up here?" She didn't need to turn around to know he was in the room, probably staring at her naked back.

"Sometimes. The capital rotates between a few Core worlds every few years, and we moved with it. I was born on Chandrila." Leia had told her as much, but she'd been curious to hear what he would say. She turned to fetch her pyjamas - practical leggings and a tunic in case she had to get up in an emergency, but still, she now owned _real pyjamas_ that were soft and warm and felt deliciously indulgent every time she put them on - so now he could stare at her breasts if he cared to.

She caught a glimpse of him in her peripheral vision. Yes, he was reassuringly predictable. He'd even gone slightly pink, as if seeing her naked body was shocking or rare and he was embarrassed to be caught looking. Rey had never been embarrassed to look at him naked, in the same way that she wasn't embarrassed to be seen, and especially not now she'd actually touched him. He'd kissed her breasts and sucked on the nipples a few nights ago and here he was, blushing at the sight of them. Rey found it charming.

She tossed the pyjamas onto the bed - the most comfortable bed she'd ever slept in, so soft it had taken her a week to get used to the feeling - and went to put her arms around his neck. He bent his head at once for a kiss.

He liked the contrast of her being naked while he was clothed and so did she, though it made her think it would be even better the other way round. His mouth was warm and familiar. They'd got such a lot of practice in kissing over the past few months, but the thrill of it never wore off. It was just touching mouths, wasn't it? It was a little disgusting, when you thought about it. You wouldn't want to look at people doing it. And yet it was so wonderful to do it, so wonderful to kiss Ben's huge mouth and tug on his hair. He was so pliable in her hold, so eager to do whatever she wanted.

_Your life is mine now._ And she knew he believed it. He believed he'd handed his life over to her when she'd revived him on Exegol. Nobody had told her that healing was considered to be of the Dark. How could easing suffering not be good? Because it imposed the will of the individual on the world, instead of accepting the Force and living in accordance with it. And of course necromancy was beyond the pale.

Rey didn't care. Ben had turned back to the Light: it was only fitting that she'd also struggled with the dark in her turn. It would still be so easy to turn aside. She was powerful, _they_ were powerful. They wouldn't have to wait for the galaxy to decide or acquiesce. They could simply reshape it. They could make it fair; they could make it right.

But the same conscience that had kept her from turning over BB-8 for all the food Unkar Plutt could offer her, kept her from it. The same conscience she'd recognised in Finn, and in the rest of the Resistance-as-was. The knowledge that there was something far bigger at stake. Something no material inducements or punishments could touch.

Ben, who didn't have one, found it fascinating. Rey had lived a harsh life, the kind of life that turned you hard and untrusting, and she'd still known. She'd still had that instinct that prevented her from falling. Maybe it was the Force. Maybe it was the remnants of the moral tales on which she'd been taught to read as a child.

Whatever it was, she'd turned him back to the Light: he thought so, she knew he thought so.

What he didn't know (or maybe he did - she always forgot just how perceptive he was) was that he was what was keeping her in it. At first, so she wouldn't be like him: and now, because she knew that if she turned, Ben would turn too. Her conscience was working for both of them.

It was all very well for him to say _My life is yours_ and look up at her with dark, liquid eyes: it made her responsible for him, and Rey took her responsibilities seriously. She would keep both of them alive and she would keep both of them from falling to the Dark, whatever it took.


End file.
